Garrick Knight Article - Must Read

[Happy Sunrise]

Always a reliable man for a good article.

THE FIRST STEP IS ALWAYS THE HARDEST

By Garrick Knight

The guillotine is primed and ready, just one month away from being set loose.

The condemned? In the harness caper it’s 15 tracks and as many as 10 clubs. Mostly rural and small-town, Dunedin and Palmerston North excepted.

And the executioner? Well, to a heartbroken and disconsolate industry, it’s Peter Jensen, Harness Racing New Zealand’s Chief Executive.

Jensen has led this industry-altering change, and many people with strong local allegiances and ties will deeply resent him, and the HRNZ Board for Friday’s announcement.

But the truth is this exercise was mandated long before Jensen walked through HRNZ’s front doors for the first time. He’s just the one that’s pushing the detonate button.

The controversial Messara Report, released in August 2018, demanded a paradigm shift for the wider industry, a fundamental change in attitude and approach to try and revive dying production.

Nearly two years later, thanks to the gross mismanagement of the TAB by its higher-ups, HRNZ has been left holding the can, so to speak.

Funding will drop – that’s for sure – and things simply can’t go on the way they have.

For two decades everything has been slowly sliding towards oblivion – turnover, funding, foal crops, ownership numbers. You name it, everything has been declining.

Covid-19 finally exposed the TAB’s precarious position and only thanks to Winston Peters will we even have an industry for the rest of the year.

It pays to remember that. Through no fault of anyone in Harness Racing, the TAB nearly died this week.

This was enough for Jensen and his Board to embolden themselves towards change. Finally push the button on what they assessed to be on necessary changes for the betterment of the whole harness racing industry.

The whole industry.

“The draft calendar released today looks a lot different to the original version,” Jensen told Harnessed.

“As is the case for most industries, Covid-19 has changed everything and we can’t believe that it’s going to get back to normal any time soon.

“I heard Westpac’s chief economist on the radio this morning and he says it’s expected that the effects of this will last for five years plus.”

Jensen says Racing Minister Winston Peters was not so subtle this week when noting that the industry needed to engage in “serious reform” that would give the Government confidence that the industry wanted to help itself and that a support package was “well-directed”.

“He made his point very clear that the industry has to change. And that has been his message for some time.”

So the future is now.

Under-performing clubs and tracks were the first pencilled in. Then those without a decent horse population next.

Jensen didn’t go in to specifics, but it’s a safe bet that Forbury Park would have topped the list as it satisfied both criteria.

Locals will be gutted - and rightly so – the likes of Graeme Anderson and Amber Hoffman especially. But the reality is that licence-holders in Dunedin have died and retired a lot faster than the new blood has come through. In fact, how many new drivers and trainers have through Dunedin and its surrounds in the last decade?

Canterbury and Southland stables were required to get meetings off the ground, and those travel cost savings can be passed on to owners.

Timaru has lost its meetings, those dates mainly shifted to Addington and Methven.

To play the devil’s advocate for a second, is anyone other than the club officials and a handful of licence-holders really going to be upset that meetings are held at Methven over Phar Lap Raceway?

They didn’t have any feature meetings, their crowds were poor, there are very few trainers, and their turnover on a meeting was far less than the clubs stealing it’s meetings.

And with Oamaru and Ashburton still open, local trainers still have decent options an hour away.

Jensen and his team have dropped the hammer on the Central Districts, eradicating everything south of Cambridge in one fell swoop.

The club and its constituents have put forward a commendable proposal to HRNZ to allow them to keep running this season, in conjunction with the Dog meetings.

And there are ticks in a lot of boxes – they own their own track, they are financially pretty secure and are fibre internet enabled.

But they only have a handful of trainers and two of the main three – Doug Gale and Stephen Doody are at or near retirement age.

Canterbury trainer Michael House has kept the club alive with huge teams the last few years, but that will be a short –term solution to a permanent problem.

What happens when he changes his business model again? Where does that leave the Central Districts.

Perhaps the complete eradication of the region in one fell swoop is a bit over-the-top.

The loss of Hawera’s two-day meeting doesn’t make a heck of a lot of sense either – a self-sufficient club that owns their own track and is always well-supported by visiting trainers.

Perhaps the region might get a short-term reprieve on the basis’ of House’s promised support this season. But the writing is on the wall – there are bugger all trainers south of Cambridge and, as Jensen rightly points out, you can’t justify the upkeep of so many tracks there.

“The compelling number for me was that 28% of standardbreds are trained in the North Island.

“And only 3% are trained south of Cambridge.

“That in itself paints a picture that the clubs cannot run full race meetings within their own region without the help of Waikato and Canterbury.

“To me, that’s a very tenuous business case. Especially when they are so reliant on Michael, who is to be commended, but could easily change direction without much notice.”

I asked Jensen flat out, whether any one decision was harder than the others, and he initially declined, saying, perhaps somewhat tokenistically that, when you are dealing with people’s livelihoods, every decision is a tough one.

But towards the end of the interview he left it slip that canning racing from Waterlea in Blenheim was a “particularly difficult” decision.

“Part of it was that the thoroughbreds aren’t going to race there, and moving forward that gives some uncertainty about the costs surrounding the track.”

Neighbouring Nelson stays, though Michael House made a salient point that Blenheim had “clearly superior” facilities and was a vital base for horses embarking or disembarking from the Wellington-Picton Ferry.

You have to feel for the hard-working committee at Waimate, who spent so much time, effort and money rebuilding the facilities after they were devastated by a storm.

But again, the cold-hard reality is that there’s what? One or two trainers there? And every other trainer and driver will still go to whatever meeting replaces it.

It’s a victim of its own location, unfortunately.

And that brings us, finally, to Southland. Where, contrary to the tone you might have picked up through this piece, I simply cannot understand why the decision has been made to strip meetings from Gore, Wyndham and Roxburgh.

Roxburgh’s once-a-year-meeting is part of that awesome and well-supported Central Otago Christmas circuit.

Yes, the club keeps their date, but they have to race on the grass at Cromwell an hour away. Why not just keep it on the all-weather?

Southern Harness is the model the rest of the country should be aspiring to.

In the north we have an arrogant, alpha club in Auckland, content to push their counterparts down the highway at Cambridge off the cliff at any available opportunity.

When they should have presented a united front, Auckland went in to bat for itself last month, trying to downtrou’ Cambridge in the process.

Anyway, I digress. Down in Southland, they have streamlined their model and it just works so well.

Sure, they don’t race for pre-Covid Auckland levels of money, but they have even fields, robust programming and all tenant clubs buying in to the philosophy they’ve adopted.

Wyndham own their own track, they’re a profitable club and have a racing surface and style that punters, trainers and drivers like.

They don’t have a heap of meetings, but they hold their own, and there is no discernible reason for them to be given the ass at this point in time.

The reason given to the club, rather feebly if we’re being frank, was fibre-optic internet connectivity.

The same applied down the road in Gore, its Eastern Southland sister club. Both are flush with sponsors and enjoy the usual reliable turnover of the Southland meetings.

Whatever reasoning is applied, it can’t be altogether substantive or justifiable.

Clubs now have a month to plead their case for reinstatement, and you can be sure-and-certain every single one of them will do so.

ensen was at pains to assure Harnessed that this was not “all she wrote” and there would be genuine and prolonged thought given to compelling arguments.

And then he said something vitally important. Something that I daresay every person at every effected club, in every effected region needs to give consideration to.

“I just ask clubs, that when they’re doing it, they look forward. To the future.

“Try and imagine what that it looks like and how their club can be a meaningful part of that.”

Sage words. And a salient point.

Put your own preferences aside for one moment and ask, what will generate the most turnover for the industry?

The fact Addington’s dates jump from 33 to 77 next season, probably answers that.

[Chief Stipe]

1 hour ago, Happy Sunrise said:

Perhaps the region might get a short-term reprieve on the basis’ of House’s promised support this season. But the writing is on the wall – there are bugger all trainers south of Cambridge and, as Jensen rightly points out, you can’t justify the upkeep of so many tracks there.

“The compelling number for me was that 28% of standardbreds are trained in the North Island.

“And only 3% are trained south of Cambridge.

“That in itself paints a picture that the clubs cannot run full race meetings within their own region without the help of Waikato and Canterbury.

“To me, that’s a very tenuous business case.

I don't understand this rationale and it is being used by the Gallops administrators as well.

If a Club and its team can keep their course going and Owners, Trainers and Drivers are willing to travel AND it doesn't cost HRNZ anything then argument is spurious at best.

[Spatchcock]

But it costs owners to send a horse to Manawatu....

[Chief Stipe]

4 minutes ago, Spatchcock said:

But it costs owners to send a horse to Manawatu....

The point is they still go there!  Don't underestimate the number of Harness owners that live in the Central Districts.  Maybe HRNZ should have looked at that data.

[Newmarket]

Addington meetings go from 33 to 77? Wow, thats gonna be exciting. Only really about 6 from 33 worth going to now, people will get sick of it.